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Bing Surpassed 140 Million Daily Users in 2024—How Much Did AI Really Drive the Growth?

Microsoft’s 2024 claim that Bing passed 140 million daily users marked major AI-search momentum—but it was a company-reported, historical DAU milestone, not proof that Bing matched Google.
From TheFinanceBase Team6 min to read
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Microsoft reported that Bing surpassed 140 million daily active users in April 2024, up from more than 100 million in March 2023. The company credited AI-powered Bing and Copilot experiences. That is a substantial, Microsoft-reported milestone—but it is historical, not a current independently verified Bing user count, and it does not show that Bing closed Google’s overall search lead.

What Microsoft actually announced

Microsoft disclosed the “new Bing” milestone during its fiscal 2024 third-quarter reporting period and discussed it publicly through Microsoft Advertising on April 29, 2024. Its proxy filing described more than 140 million daily active users and linked the product’s appeal to AI integrated directly into search. Microsoft proxy filing

Bing had previously passed 100 million daily active users in March 2023. Comparing the two company-reported thresholds implies approximately 40 million additional daily active users, or roughly 40% growth. Because both figures are rounded thresholds, the calculation is an approximation rather than an audited growth rate.

Reported milestone What it says Important qualification
March 2023 More than 100 million Bing daily active users Microsoft-reported threshold
April 2024 More than 140 million Bing daily active users Microsoft-reported threshold; not a current figure
Implied change About 40 million, or roughly 40% Derived from rounded company disclosures

Microsoft Advertising connected the growth in Bing and Edge engagement with Copilot and generative-AI features. Microsoft Advertising’s April 2024 explanation

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What “daily active users” does—and does not—mean

DAU measures activity by users on a day; it is not a count of searches. The 140-million figure does not establish 140 million daily queries, 140 million exclusive Bing users, or 140 million independently verified people worldwide.

  • Activity could occur on Bing.com, Edge, Windows, mobile apps, MSN or integrated AI surfaces.
  • A person may use both conventional search and chat, image-generation or other Copilot features.
  • Microsoft did not publish a complete breakdown showing how much came from each surface or how overlapping users were handled.
  • “Over 140 million” is a rounded threshold, not a precise audited count.

That distinction matters when comparing Bing with Google. A user metric, query volume, search-market share, advertising revenue and network reach answer different questions and cannot be substituted for one another.

How AI could have increased Bing usage

Conversational search

The 2023 Bing relaunch added an AI chat experience for conversational answers, summaries and follow-up prompts. The product was subsequently integrated into the broader Copilot strategy, allowing a user to continue a line of questioning instead of starting a separate search for every step.

More useful complex queries

AI can reduce the work involved in multi-part research, comparisons, planning, rewriting and summarization. Preserved conversational context makes a sequence of related questions feel more like a research session than a list of isolated keyword searches.

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Search plus creation

Microsoft positioned AI-powered Bing as more than ranked links: it could generate text and create images as well as retrieve information. Its corporate reporting described these answer and content-generation capabilities. Microsoft fiscal 2023 annual-report material

Distribution through Microsoft products

Copilot and related experiences were distributed across Bing, Edge, Windows, MSN and other Microsoft services. Microsoft later described Copilot as integrated across Bing, Edge, GroupMe, MSN, Windows and Xbox. 2025 annual shareholder meeting

This ecosystem can increase discovery without requiring every person to consciously switch their default search engine. It also means the DAU milestone may reflect Microsoft distribution and AI engagement alongside traditional search demand.

Did AI alone cause the 40% increase?

No public disclosure isolates the causal effect of Bing Chat or Copilot. Microsoft attributed the growth in part to its AI investment, but usage could also have been affected by Edge and Windows defaults, marketing, mobile promotion, product-quality changes, partnerships, seasonality or changes in counting methodology.

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The defensible conclusion is that AI was a likely major contributor and Microsoft’s stated explanation—not that AI mathematically caused all 40 million additional users.

Does 140 million threaten Google?

The milestone is strategically meaningful for Bing, but it does not demonstrate competitive parity with Google. Absolute user growth can be large while a platform remains a distant second in worldwide search share.

A proper comparison requires independent data separated by geography and device type, and ideally by searches, visits and unique users. The 140-million DAU claim should not be converted into a percentage of Google’s audience without a directly comparable measurement series.

Did the audience growth produce revenue?

Microsoft’s later financial results show continued momentum in the broader Search and news advertising business:

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Period Reported result Scope
Fiscal 2025 Revenue increased $1.6 billion, or 13%; revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 20% Search and news advertising, not Bing.com alone
Fiscal 2026 third quarter Revenue increased $304 million, or 9%; revenue excluding traffic acquisition costs increased 12% Search and news advertising, not Bing.com alone

Microsoft attributed the later growth to higher search volume, revenue per search and third-party partnerships. Fiscal 2025 fourth-quarter results and fiscal 2026 third-quarter results

These figures suggest commercial momentum, but they do not prove that the 140 million Bing users generated a specific amount of revenue. The segment includes advertising across a wider Microsoft ecosystem, and excluding traffic acquisition costs is not the same as reporting Bing-only profit.

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What happened after April 2024?

Microsoft continued to report share gains across Bing and Edge and said Copilot had surpassed 150 million active users at its 2025 annual shareholder meeting. That is a broader Copilot metric, not an updated Bing DAU figure. Microsoft shareholder meeting

Microsoft’s fiscal 2026 disclosures continued to show search-advertising growth. However, the cited materials do not replace the April 2024 “over 140 million” statement with a newer, directly comparable global Bing DAU number. Its European Union Digital Services Act report uses a different measure—approximately 133 million average monthly EU Bing users for the six months ending June 30, 2025—and should not be compared directly with global daily users. Microsoft EU Digital Services Act report

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Benefits and risks of AI-led search

Potential benefits

  • Faster synthesis of complicated questions.
  • Natural follow-up questions with conversational context.
  • Writing, rewriting and image-generation assistance in the same workflow.
  • More accessible research for users who struggle to formulate precise keywords.

Trade-offs

  • Hallucinated or overconfident answers can make verification harder.
  • Summaries may omit sources or reduce clicks to publishers.
  • Publishers face uncertainty over referral traffic and attribution.
  • Advertisers may gain new placements but face less transparent journeys from prompt to conversion.
  • Traditional ranked results can remain easier to audit and compare for some tasks.

What the milestone means for advertisers

Microsoft Advertising sells access to Bing, Microsoft properties and partner inventory through pay-per-click auctions. Microsoft says there is no minimum fee and that advertisers can set daily budgets; actual costs vary by keyword, geography, competition and audience. Microsoft Advertising

The practical lesson is not to buy Bing solely because of the 140-million headline. Advertisers can test Microsoft inventory alongside Google with a controlled budget, conversion tracking and separate branded and non-branded reporting. Compare cost per acquisition, return on ad spend, lead quality and impression share before moving substantial spend. Network reach can include more than Bing.com, so placement and conversion data deserve close scrutiny.

How to judge whether Bing’s growth was durable

  1. Retention: Did users return after trying AI features?
  2. Query frequency: Did they perform more searches, or simply open the product?
  3. Commercial intent: Did searches and conversions support sustained advertising growth?
  4. Geographic breadth: Was growth broad or concentrated in selected markets?
  5. Distribution independence: Did usage expand beyond Edge, Windows and other Microsoft defaults?

Later advertising results provide evidence of commercial momentum. The public disclosures cited here do not fully answer retention, query frequency or how much activity depended on Microsoft’s distribution advantage.

Bottom line

Bing did surpass 140 million daily active users as a Microsoft-reported milestone in 2024, and AI was central to the company’s explanation. The increase showed real product momentum and was followed by continued growth in Microsoft’s broader search-advertising business. It did not, by itself, prove that Bing overtook Google, captured a specific share of global search, or that AI alone generated the increase. The durable test remains independent evidence on retention, query volume, market share and advertising performance.

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